


When the show's over early

by DiseasedBreeze



Series: Batjokes ficlets [1]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: 2nd person fic, Batjokes flavor, Codependency, Gen, Joker rambles, Metaphor overdose, Post Batman death, Rambling, Romance flavored angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28038675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiseasedBreeze/pseuds/DiseasedBreeze
Summary: Batman is dead and the Joke's on you.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Series: Batjokes ficlets [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2107053
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37





	When the show's over early

The world has ended.

Oh it appears to go on, but that’s just because it hasn’t realized it’s dead yet. Like a chicken with its head cut off or dancers when the band has a heart attack. Soon they’ll realize it’s all over. The planets will stop dancing and stand still in horror, the stars will snuff themselves out and, hell, the whole damn universe might as well shove a shotgun in its mouth and pull the trigger. You wouldn’t feel it, you wouldn’t feel a damn thing.

It’s all over. They just don’t know it yet and so there’s cheers from outside as you stand in the middle of the room, tilt your head back and listen to the fading echoes of a symphony that’s come to an end.

No, not come to an end. You and him twisted together, corpses locked forever in one last fatal embrace would be an ending. A bittersweet one, but a proper ending still. The dancers would take their bows and shuffle off stage to make room for a new act. This...this isn’t an ending to your dance.

This dance has been cut off, cruelly, like a severed limb.

Eventually those cheers are going to turn into screams of fear once they realize what it means. They’ll realize when the dying world crashes in around them. They’ll turn to you for comfort and support. You won’t laugh. It’s not funny.

Batman is dead! They cry and expect you to be happy to be told the world has ended.

Not a bang. Not a whimper. Just...

Silence.

No, worse.

It’s the absence of a song that has always been there. Your song, the song you made just being who you are. Were. It’s a four-letter word now.

You were never meant to be a solo act.

You were made for him.

Without him, you’re a joke without a punchline, just the unanswered expectation stretching out into the void. Show’s over. It ended without you. The audience are already shuffling out. Does it matter if you take a bow?

No curtains for you, no applause, no cries for an encore.

Just you there in the middle of the stage holding the microphone while the audience leaves.

It’s so bitterly _unfair._ You weren’t done, you had jokes left to tell, you had an act that was _building_ to something but now you’re never going to be able to hold your head high and bask in the cheers of the crowd as they _get the joke._ This is what your act is without him. All buildup and no payoff at the end to make it all worth it. Just a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You can’t do it without _him_ you see. Without him there’s no act, just you alone on the empty stage and soon they’ll turn out the lights on you and even that’s going to be gone. You can’t be a comic foil without someone comically foiling you. There can’t be a Joker without a Batman. Without him you’re not the Joker. You’re just a joke. Not even worthy of an uppercase letter.

So no, you don’t laugh. You don’t dance around or celebrate.

Maybe the idiots applauding Armageddon think that’s what you’re doing but you’re just…waiting. Just a fool on an empty stage waiting for the curtain to drop.

In a way you’ve come full circle and your shoulders start to shake. Your story ends with you the same pathetic loser you started as. It would almost be fitting if it was planned. Right now it’s just another bit of bitterness that your big breakout role as Joker ends the same as all your other comedy routines.

Now they can hear the poison of a last laugh dying inside you and festering in your throat. It rises and falls inside you like bad seafood, filling your mouth with the taste of rotting fish.

The world loses detail as it oh so slowly starts to crumple around you. The colors leech out of your suit and your smile. You think the crack of snapping wood is the curtain crashing through the ceiling, until you realize it’s not just in your head.

The world is black and white and red.

The red of your lips and the red of your eyes where you have been crying. The red of the face the Bat has made of blood. His own blood. It sweeps boldly across his pale skin, accentuating the shape of the face he usually wears like you accentuate the red of your lips with lipstick.

He has clawed his way back out of Hell for you.

Your eyes meet his and you fall in love again, for the first time, for the last time, for all time. The world begins again in that heartbeat of a moment when you see him new for the first time and the musicians pick up their instruments to start playing your song.

You smile.


End file.
